Outgrowing The Uniform
by Lord Purple Heart
Summary: When a friend is lost to flame and the battle is done, what else can be done but to remember those lost? Note: This one is a tad reliant on your imagination for the full effect, so please remember that as you read. Rated M for some cursing, I guess. Does the website necessitate that? I think so.


Outgrowing the Uniform

He was gone.

That was the fact, and I had to deal with it. I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't change anything.

He was gone.

My chest was pierced with a spike of pure fire, and I fought back the urge to let the tears out again. I couldn't, though, since I'd already emptied my eyes earlier. My lip began to bleed for the millionth time, and I held my hands together tightly like my life depended on it.

I thought I'd come to terms with it.

I'd thought I'd forgotten it.

But, as the river threatened to burst the dam I had built inside my heart, I realized how foolish that thought was. How stupid the thought was. I wanted to hit myself with a nail bat over and over for thinking it for even a second.

I could never forget him.

I looked at my own two hands, expecting to see them as though they were perfectly fine. I thought I'd see two healthy hands. Hands that could help me dig myself out of the dank, dark hole that had become my emotions.

Instead, I was looking at a pair of miserably shaking hands that looked like they belonged to someone having a seizure. Hands that looked so weak and frail that they probably couldn't even clench their fists without breaking.

I was once strong. Stronger than anything and anyone else in the world.

But now...I was just so damned weak.

Weak without him.

My heart beat painfully, and I clutched at my left breast frantically. I heard the gasps of air, and they sounded inhuman. Ridden with grief and nearly dead-sounding. The breath of a zombie.

_Is it...mine?_

That thought only added onto the metric tons of misery already piled onto my shoulders. I tried to ignore it and reached upwards, touching my hair.

It felt ruffled, ragged and as messy as a bird's nest.

_Like it could be anything else but messy_

I thought that bitterly as I ran a hand through it, stopping at that one streak of hair in front of my forehead. The streak of hair that painfully reminded me of him.

Was it because of my father that it just happened to look like him?

_...damn it._

I was a total wreck. Not what I'd expected myself to be after saving the world.

I sat up from the bed, glancing at my tear-soaked pillow. It looked like it just came out of the wash, dripping wet like a sponge.

As I removed the wrinkled blankets, I felt the cold air hit my body like a baseball.

It was freezing, even more so than anything I'd ever experienced before. It wasn't even the cold I had felt when I opened the new family freezer; not like the frost that I had been experiencing last winter. It ran through my skin and bones in an instant, chilling them so thoroughly it only served to worsen my feelings. My hands and feet had become ghostly, so cold that they froze the rest of my already freezing body.

I felt dead tired and ready to fall back down and fall asleep. But I didn't want to do that.

I might dream about him again.

I slowly stood up from the bed, trying to ignore the agonizing cold and the burning in my heart.

I'd never thought that those two feelings could work together.

Yet they were hand-in-hand, and hounding me to hell.

I shuffled over to the doorway, reaching weakly for the light switch. Once the lights turned on, I felt pain blare into my eyes. I squinted and reached upwards towards the source of the light, blocking the rays with my fingers.

I felt my breath hiccup in my throat, an aftereffect of crying a lot, and I cursed under my breath as I looked down to the ground.

Something, for the first time in what seemed like centuries, caught my attention. Ever so slightly.

In between the door and the wall, there was a white square of roughly torn paper. As I knelt down, I almost fell over onto my back. Ignoring the weakness in my knees, I grit my teeth and grabbed the paper.

I stood back up and started slowly taking careful and steady steps back to the bed. I unfurled the paper, and there were words written on it.

**There's some food outside the door, Ryuuko! Eat it when you want, since there's a lot of mystery croquettes in the fridge already! Dad said we might need to get a new one!**

**I miss Senketsu too, Ryuuko. So, when you're okay with it, maybe we can cry it out together?**

**Signed your best friend, Mako **

I smiled in spite of my ragged self before my eyes wandered back to that name.

My partner.

My comrade.

My Sunday Best, as Mako liked to nickname him.

My uniform.

"...Senketsu..." As I dared to utter the name out loud, even though I swore not to, all kinds of memories rushed back into my head. My eyes stopped seeing my room, and began flashing through the memories.

**_This ironing is great! Now, be sure to get behind the lapels! And be thorough about it!_**

**_Lose 2 centimeters from your waist! _**

**_I will force you to undress, Ryuuko!_**

**_I, too, am neither human nor clothing!_**

**_Friend...huh?_**

"SENKETSU!" No longer able to control the flood of pain that swirled around my heart and constricted it like a snake, I cried out his name again. The feeble strength left in my limbs was replaced with overwhelming weakness, and my knees crashed hard onto the floor.

But the pain hardly registered.

_**Sailor uniforms were meant to be outgrown. **_

"WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THAT, SENKETSU?!" I yelled into empty air. It felt incredibly painful to say, and hurt even more to hear.

**_From now on, you're free to wear any kind of clothes you like. Clothes that can be far cuter than I can be._**

"I DON'T CARE ONE FUCKING BIT ABOUT BEING CUTE, YOU SLUTTY COSPLAY OUTFIT!" My throat was already raw from crying and crying, but I didn't care one bit. I couldn't stop myself from howling in misery, and I felt my fingers begin to dig into my palms. I could see blood begin to leak out of my hands, but the pain still hardly registered.

My heart hurt much more than losing blood.

**_It was fun, Ryuuko._**

"IF YOU WERE HAVING FUN, WHY'D YOU HAVE TO UP AND LEAVE!?"

The blood on my hands was beginning to flow onto my arms, dripping onto the bedsheets.

None of that mattered.

He made me lose much more than that.

**_I'm sure your father can rest in peace now._**

"AND WHAT ABOUT ME, HUH?! LIKE HELL I CAN HAVE FUN WITHOUT YOU, MUCH LESS REST IN FUCKING PEACE!" I gripped the bedsheets hard, not caring as I watched the cloth tear in front of my eyes.

**_Don't cry, Ryuuko._**

"...like telling me that will change anything..." My voice came out a hoarse groan, unable to speak properly. I dragged my body into a sitting position on the floor, my legs splayed out to either side.

As I slowly looked across the room and gazed at the mirror, I blinked in weak surprise.

In front of me sat a teenage girl with bloodshot red eyes and a pink nose, with tear streaming down her face. Her lip was crusty from dry blood, and her hands were dyed in bright red fresh blood. Her hair was tousled and mangled, looking barely like what it used to be. A single red streak of hair that ran down the left side was still present, and as vivid as the blood on my arms.

I blinked, and then what I saw was different.

It was still me, sitting on the floor.

But she stared at me with eyes that vibrated and twinkled with life, and her face was completely back to the way it used to be. Her hair was neat, not a strand out of place.

On her left hand, there was a red glove.

On her feet, she wore white shoes.

And instead of the undersized pajamas...

She wore a black and red sailor uniform.

"...I've made a mess of myself, haven't I? Eh, Senketsu?" My voice said those words, and they somehow sounded stronger than before.

I grabbed the nearest thing I could get and threw it at the mirror.

The hairbrush I had thrown ripped across the room, smashing the mirror into smithereens. I stared at the shards of glass blankly, and then I turned back to the bed. Crawling onto the mattress, I took my pillow and hugged it to myself.

It made me feel a bit better. Just a bit.

**_Don't cry, Ryuuko._**

"...you're gonna have to give me a little more time, buddy..."

That was all I said before I let exhausted sleep take over.

I didn't want to dream about him.

But I wanted to see him.


End file.
